The Blog
The Loneliness of Being the Only Active Mum in Your Circle
This isn’t about being ungrateful for the friends you have. It’s about the specific kind of loneliness that comes from wanting more – and not having anyone around you who wants it too.
I love a dinner and a glass of wine as much as anyone.
There’s something easy about it. Familiar. A chance to sit down, catch up, and talk through everything that’s been going on. But somewhere along the way, that became the only option. And I started to notice something.
I wasn’t leaving those evenings feeling better. I was leaving them feeling like I’d talked a lot and somehow still hadn’t been fed.
The moment I really saw it was when I found myself drinking coffee I don’t even like, in an overpriced coffee shop, planning my morning around a catch-up I could have had walking through the woods. And I thought: when did I stop expecting more than this?
That question sat with me for a long time.
It’s Not That You Don’t Have Friends
This is the part that makes it hard to talk about.
Because from the outside, everything looks fine. You have people. You have a social life. You show up, you make plans, you stay connected.
But there’s a specific kind of loneliness that lives inside that, and it’s the loneliness of being the only one who wants to do things.
Not just talk about doing them. Actually do them.
Go somewhere. Move. Try something. Build something into the day that feels like more than sitting still and catching up on what everyone else has been doing.
And when you’re surrounded by people who are perfectly content without that – who are genuinely satisfied with dinner, the same catch-up, the same format every time – it creates a gap that’s surprisingly hard to name.
Because you love these people. You’re not looking to replace them. You just want something they don’t seem to need. And that feeling, that quiet mismatch, is lonelier than most women admit.
Why It Gets Harder in Motherhood
Before kids, I didn’t have to think about this.
Friendships formed naturally around doing things. A friend who ran. A group who travelled. Someone who’d text on a Saturday morning and suggest something spontaneous and actually mean it. The social world I lived in had movement built into it – not as a special effort, but just as the texture of how we spent time together.
I didn’t realise how much I relied on that until it changed.
Motherhood compresses all of it. Not because the friends disappear (most of them don’t) but because the shared context shifts so dramatically that the old structures stop working. Suddenly everyone is exhausted. Everyone is navigating the same fog of early parenthood, the same mental load, the same logistical chaos. And the social glue that holds people together in that season is largely built around solidarity and survival.
Who else is struggling. Who else is drowning. Who else just needs to sit down for an hour without someone asking them for something.
And that connection is real and necessary, especially early on. The “I don’t know you but I completely understand your life” solidarity of new motherhood is something I’d never dismiss. It gets you through some of the hardest stretches.
But over time, if that’s the only register your social life operates in, something starts to narrow.
The conversations circle the same themes. The plans default to the same format. And if you’re someone who has always found energy in movement, in doing things, in being out in the world rather than just talking about it, you start to feel it. A flatness. A quiet hunger for something that isn’t quite there.
The version of you who used to go and do things starts to feel very far away.
The Grace Trap
We’ve become very good at giving each other grace.
Someone cancels? Of course we understand. Someone’s tired? Completely valid. Life feels overwhelming? Always.
And that kindness matters deeply – it’s the fabric of real friendship in a hard season of life.
But sometimes, if I’m being honest, it also means nothing actually happens.
Plans get dropped. Things don’t get rearranged. And slowly, without anyone meaning for it to, everything defaults to staying in rather than getting out. You stop suggesting. You stop expecting. And you quietly absorb the message that this – the dinner, the coffee, the catch-up – is just what life looks like now.
The disappointment doesn’t arrive loudly. It accumulates.
And one day you realise you can’t remember the last time you did something that genuinely lit you up with another person beside you.
What You’re Actually Missing
It’s not the activity itself, exactly. It’s what the activity carries.
When you move alongside someone – run together, walk somewhere new, do something that requires both of you to actually show up – the conversation is different. It goes somewhere it doesn’t go over a table. There’s something about side by side rather than face to face, about shared physical experience, about doing something together rather than just being somewhere together, that creates a different quality of connection.
I’ve had more genuinely nourishing conversations on a slow run with someone than in hours of catching up over dinner. Not because the dinner was bad, but because something about moving together opens things up.
And when you don’t have that, when the only version of connection available to you is static and contained, part of you starts to go hungry in a way you might not even be able to articulate.
The Loneliness Nobody Names
Here’s the part that rarely gets said out loud.
It feels ungrateful to want more. Like you should be glad you have friends at all, glad you have people who show up, glad for the dinner and the wine and the familiar warmth of people who know you.
And you are glad. That’s what makes this complicated.
Because it’s not either/or. You can love your people deeply and still feel the absence of something they can’t give you. You can be genuinely connected and still feel lonely in this specific, quiet way.
The loneliness of being the only active mum in your circle isn’t about not being loved. It’s about not being met – in the part of you that wants to move through the world rather than just watch it go by.
And naming that, just being honest about it rather than feeling guilty for it, tends to be where things start to shift.
What It Feels Like When You Find Them
I want to tell you what it’s like, because I don’t think it gets described enough.
It’s not a grand moment. It’s surprisingly quiet.
It was a run with someone who just kept up – not because they were faster, but because they actually wanted to be there. No negotiating the pace down to a walk. No apologising for suggesting it in the first place. No checking their phone at the end and saying “we should do that again” in the tone that means they won’t.
Just someone who showed up, ran alongside me, talked about something real, and at the end said “same time next week?”
That was it. That was the whole thing.
And I remember thinking: oh. This is what I’ve been missing. Not the running exactly – but the ease of being with someone who already gets it. Someone who doesn’t need convincing that this is a reasonable way to spend a Tuesday morning. Someone who treats this part of life as normal, because for them it is.
Once you’ve felt that, the gap becomes much harder to unsee. But it also becomes much easier to go and find it – because you know exactly what you’re looking for.
Why This Is Why the Active Happy Mum Club Exists
I built the Active Happy Mum Club because I felt this to my core.
Not in a way that made me angry at the friends I had – but in a way that made me realise I needed a different layer. A space where wanting more wasn’t the odd thing. Where suggesting a run or a trip or something active wasn’t met with hesitation or a polite decline. Where the women around me were already living the version of life I was trying to build, and I could just show up and be part of it.
That’s what the Club is. Not a replacement for the friendships you already have – but the layer that’s been missing. The room where ambition still exists. Where movement is the point, not the obstacle. Where you don’t have to explain why you want this.
If you’ve read this far and felt seen by any of it, it was built for you.
Join the Active Happy Mum Club on Facebook →
A Final Thought
The loneliness of being the only active mum in your circle is real. It doesn’t mean your friendships have failed, and it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with wanting more.
It means you haven’t found your people for this particular part of you. I should note here: my absolute ride or die best friends will categorically never run with me. And I don’t love them any less (most days). I don’t see them as less valuable because I can’t drag them to a Hyrox competition. But as we grow into motherhood and our daily life is different, it’s important to hold value to what you want to do as well.
And the good news is, they exist. They’re out there feeling exactly the same way, wondering if anyone else is too.
You just have to stop waiting for them to appear in the circle you already have, and start looking somewhere new.
FAQs: Finding Your People as an Active Mum
Q: Is it normal to feel lonely even when you have a good social life? More common than most women admit, and particularly common in motherhood. The loneliness of being the only active person in your circle isn’t about lack of connection – it’s about a specific kind of mismatch. You can be well-loved and still feel the absence of people who want to do life the way you do. Naming it honestly, rather than feeling guilty about it, tends to be the first step toward doing something about it.
Q: How do I find other active mums who actually want to do things? The most reliable way is to put yourself in spaces where activity is already the point – running groups, parkrun, fitness classes with a social element, or communities built specifically around active motherhood. Self-selection does a lot of the work for you in those spaces. The Active Happy Mum Club is built around exactly this, and the running groups near you post has practical suggestions for finding something local.
Q: How do I suggest more active plans to friends without it feeling awkward? Start small and frame it as an addition rather than a replacement – “fancy a walk before coffee?” rather than “let’s stop doing dinners.” Most people are more open to active socialising than their habits suggest; they’re just waiting for someone else to suggest it first. If friends consistently decline, that’s useful information – it probably means the active layer of your social life needs to come from somewhere else, while those friendships stay as they are.
Q: What if my friends think I’m judging them for not being active? This is a fear worth naming because it often holds women back from being honest about what they want. The clearest way to avoid it is to never frame movement as the better choice – just your preference. “I find I feel better when we do something active” rather than “we should do something more than just dinner.” Most people respond well to that framing. And the ones who feel judged regardless are usually carrying their own stuff about it that has nothing to do with you.
Q: Is it worth trying to get existing friends into running or exercise? Sometimes, but with low expectations. The most sustainable approach is to invite openly and genuinely – once or twice – without making it a project. If a friend is curious, great. If not, let it go without pressure. Trying to convince someone into an active lifestyle they’re not intrinsically drawn to tends to create friction in the friendship rather than connection. It’s usually better to find the active people separately and let existing friendships be what they already are.
Read Next
Stop Waiting for Your Friends to Want More
8 Reasons Every Active Mum Needs Active Mum Friends
How to Find Active Mum Friends Who Actually Show Up
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